Why bad bugs hit good people

Software is buggy. Humans write and test software and humans are imperfect; as a result, so is software. This is the reality of software and should come as a surprise to nobody. What can be surprising are the kind of bugs we actually see make their way out into the wild. We've seen two very prominent examples this week. The first was the release of iOS 8.0.1 on Wednesday which broke cellular service and Touch ID for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users. The very same day we saw a huge bug in bash publicly disclosed; a vulnerability leaving millions and millions of personal computers, servers, embedded systems, and who knows how many other types of Internet-connected devices open to attack. And for most people, it's baffling how bugs like this could ever find their way into the world. Aren't developers supposed to be smart? The bash bug may be obscure enough that many end-users don't understand it, but what about iOS 8.0.1? How could such a big piece of software ship with such a glaring bug that broke such critical pieces of functionality?